


Breaking Up Is Hard To Do pt.2

by amanda_jolene



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 20:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1996029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amanda_jolene/pseuds/amanda_jolene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: It's days 9-15 of the break up in 'Breaking Up Is Hard To Do'. Finn's POV during the break up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking Up Is Hard To Do pt.2

Their friends are starting to worry. 

Because Rae is avoiding everyone, even Chop, and her phone conversations with Archie are becoming shorter and shorter (last night they only talked for a brief minute but Archie figures maybe he shouldn’t have told her to call Finn). She manages to escape Chloe at every turn and Izzy refuses to help the others in their pursuit (she also won’t talk to Finn). 

They think Finn might be worse, though. He’s going through the motions- college, football, pub, parties- but he’s back to being terribly grumpy and while he’s never been much a talker, he’s not much of a listener these days either. 

So, they aren’t surprised to find him holed up in the corner of the pub the tenth night of the breakup, working on his third drink and rolling his fourth cigarette. He’s the same calm and collected Finn but Archie notices the lines of desperation around his eyes. Chloe rubs his back soothingly (until he shrugs her off) and Izzy pulls her into the loo, leaving the two boys to prod their friend. 

"You gonna make it, mate?" Chop asks, his voice unsure because the lad in front of him looks a bit like Finn but there’s something very unfamilar about the emotion on his face. 

"S’pose." 

Chop look ate Archie and nudges him under the table as if to say your turn. “You know, maybe this is a good thing.” Finn glares at him through the smoke and Archie is backtracking. “I don’t mean good. I mean…” and he stops talking and take a long drink because he knows exactly what he means, he’s just not sure if he should say it.. You fucked up and you might have to just live with it.

"I think what he’s trying to say is that sometimes space makes ya heart love more or something like that," Chop’s nose crinkles. "Anyway, I’m sure she’s achin’ ta see ya as much as you’re achin’ ta see her." 

Finn stares at him, takes a drink. “You think?” 

"Yeah, course I do." 

Finn nods, a sarcastic smile tugging his lips up. “Yeah,” he downs the rest of his drink and shrugs his jacket back on. “Well, I think that’s a mighty shit theory because I went to the hospital to catch her today and she wanted absolutely fuck all to do with me and her therapist ripped me a new one.” 

"Maybe you should have chosen more neutral ground," Archie offers. "Or maybe you shouldn’t have been an absolute prick to her." 

"Well," Finn slips out of the booth. "Maybe you should go straight to hell." 

(Finn will call Archie that same night and apologize because Archie was right and Archie will apologize because even though he was right, you don’t kick a mate when they’re down.)

The 11th day of their breakup is a Sunday and there’s no chance that Finn will even catch a glimpse of her. He calls her house once and Linda doesn’t hang up on him right away. 

"She doesn’t want to talk to you, Finn. You didn’t sign up for this, remember?" 

"Tell her i’m sorry, please." 

It’s so quiet he wonders if he’s missed the dial tone somehow but then she says in a much softer tone, “Some things you can’t apologize for. Bye, Finn.” 

The news hits him hard. Surely… surely a stupid outburst could be forgiven. Because they’d both said things in anger, right? Because she couldn’t possibly have meant it when she said that she never wanted to see him again. 

The possibility of them really being over makes his stomach burn and he loses his breath and his lunch and he’s still dry heaving when his dad find him kneeling in front of the toliet. 

"You alright?" 

Finn’s eyes snap shut and he leans back on his heels. “Spectacular.” 

His dad closes the lid to the toliet and flushes it and takes a sit on the edge of the bathtub, looking his only child over. The lad has been ghosting around the house, rattling in the kitchen at night, and drinking enough tea to fill a pill. His eyes are purple underneath (and stained with tears that have nothing to do with being physically sick) and he’s worried about his kid but all he can do is stroke his beard and say, “Cryin’ and hurlin’. Must be a girl.” 

"Can we not talk about it?" Finn reaches for some tissues and wipes his mouth, head hung low. 

"Sure, sure. Want some tea?" 

Finn shrugs. “Sure.” 

But by the time his dad makes the tea and fixes it just so and makes Finn a sandwich, the boy is already asleep in his bed. Doesn’t matter that it’s only 4 and the sun is streaming in. So his dad does something he hasn’t done in a long time. He puts on _Hey Jude_ and sits beside him on the bed and rubs his back and pretends he doesn’t notice when Finn wakes up and starts to cry because Finn did the same for him when his mother walked out. 

"You’ll be alright, boy" is all he says. 

On Monday, Finn sees Rae twice. 

The first time is right before college starts and she’s got her hair down and it makes his gut ache because he knows her smells like violets and her skin like roses and he’s fucked up so bad that he might never get to smell either again. He moves to approach her because maybe this is the neutral territory Archie was talking about. But then there’s two girls in front of him talking about how well he did in his game and how they missed him at the party and then the bell rings and she’s gone (the two girls will stare after him when he walks away and then accuse each other of being too annoying). 

"I think I should talk to her here," Finn tells Archie on their next break." 

"I think that’s a bad idea." 

"Why? You said we needed to be on-" 

"Don’t make her cry at school, Finn." Archie pockets his lighter. "She’s having it hard enough at college. "

"I’m not going to make her cry." 

"It’s inevitable. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Just don’t let it get worse here, ok?" 

He sees her again at the end of the day when he’d headed towards the pitch and she’s coming out of the library. She sees him this time, too, and they both pause. There’s an expanse of hallway between them and his legs are aching to cross it but he remembers what happened when he approached her at the hospital and Archie was right, making her cry at college was the worst thing he could do. He turns and walks out of the double doors and it isn’t until the cool air hits his face and his lungs inflate that he realizes he hadn’t been breathing. 

He doesn’t see her on the 13th or 14th day of their breakup. He looks for her, goes out of his way to wait by the library (Chloe tells him Rae’s last class is study hall in the library) because even though he’s not going to talk to her here, he stil has to see her. It hurts deep down in his bones but it’s all he’d got left. 

"She’s got a fever." Izzy tells him when he asks. She’s got a packet of assignments to deliver to Rae that afternoon and when Finn offers to take it, she shakes her head. "I don’t think that’s a good idea." 

He’s not proud of himself but he catches Izzy at the next break and offers to carry her bag and asks her how she and Chop are doing. She chatters on and when she’s not looking, he slips the packet out of her bag because he’s got to do something (when she realizes what he did, she won’t talk to him for a week). 

"Finn," Linda shakes her head. "Rae is sick. She does not-" 

"I’m just dropping this off," he hands her the packet. "Just… tell her I hope she gets well and… that… I’m thinking about her." 

"I though Izzy was bringing this by?" She asks suspiciously, cocking her head to the side. 

Finn just shrugs and prays she doesn’t open it and find the little pieces of paper between each assignment that read I’m sorry.

He goes home that night and adds a little to the love letter and worries what he’ll do with it if things stay this way forever. It’s the first (and only) time he ever rereads it and even though some of his own words embarrass him, he wonders how he could have ever doubted that what they had was love. 

_Rae, if you’ll ever take me back, I promise that even on your worst days, I’ll love you through it. Please, don’t give up on us. Don’t give up on me._

And he puts the letter back in his underwear drawer and goes to bed even though it’s only 6 and he hasn’t eaten because there’s nothing he wants to do and he hasn’t been hungry for days. 

She’s at school on the 15th day of their breakup and he’s late for all of his classes because he follows her to all of hers. It’s a bit stalkerish, he knows this and berates himself for it, but he just wants to see her. It’s not enough but it’s all he has. He skips his last class and edges around book cases, watching her work on her assignment. She looks tired and sickly and he wonders if her mum is taking proper care of her and wishing she’d let him at least get close enough to ask how she’s doing. 

He shrinks a little when Archie shows up and slides into the seat across from her. His blood boils a little and it’s not fucking fair that she can forgive Archie and Chloe but she can’t forgive him. He sinks down between the rows of books and clutches his chest because he doesn’t want to cry at college either. He has to do something to distract himself because his heart is on the verge of understanding why she can forgive Archie and Chloe but not him and he knows it’s going to be big and he’s begging his heart not right here, not right now. His hand shakes when he tears a piece of paper out of his notebook, pencil scratching out the only thing he can think of. _She talks to birds. She talks to angels. She talks to trees. She talk to bees. She don’t talk to me. Talks to the rainbows and to the seas. She talks to the trees. She don’t talk to me._

Archie’s gone and the bell is about to ring so he walks ast her and drops the note on the table and keeps walking. When he gets to the door, he looks back and she’s got the note unfolded and she’s looking at him and she’s finally not crying. Her mouth quirks up and he takes it as a good sign. 

(Later that night when he’s making tea, he’ll realize she’s reluctant to let him back in because he’s the first person she’s ever let in and she loved and trusted him more than she did anyone else and he had let her down. The realization will knock the breath out of him and his dad will find him sitting on the floor with his head between his knees, kettle screaming. He’ll make the tea and set a cup by his son, pet his head and say “You’ll be alright, boy.”)


End file.
